3. Stylistic devices.

The use of various stylistic devices, both lexical and syntactical, is largely traditional. Editorials abound in trite stylistic means, especially metaphors and epithets, e.g., international climate, a price explosion, a price spiral, a spectacular sight, an outrageous act, brutal rule, an astounding statement, crazy policies.

Genuine stylistic means are frequently used, which helps the writer to bring his idea home to the reader through the associations that genuine imagery arouses. Practically any stylistic device may be found in editorial writing, and when aptly used, such devices prove to be a powerful means of appraisal, of expressing a personal attitude to the matter in hand, of exercising the necessary emotional effect on the reader: "So if the result of the visit is the burying of the cold war, the only mourners will be the arms manufacturers who profit from it. The ordinary people will dance on the grave." (Daily Worker)

Satirical effect is frequently achieved by the use of irony, the breaking-up of set expressions, the stylistic use of word-building, by using allusions, etc. Two types of allusions can be distinguished in newspaper article writing: (a) allusions to political and other facts of the day which are indispensable and have no stylistic value, and (b) historical, literary and biblical allusions which are often used to create a specific stylistic effect, largely — satirical.

The emotional force of expression in the editorial is often enhanced by the use of various syntactical stylistic devices. Some editorials abound in parallel constructions, various types of repetition, rhetorical questions and other ' syntactical stylistic means.

Different papers vary in degree of emotional colouring and stylistic originality of expression. While these qualities are typical enough of the "popular" newspapers (those with large circulations), such as The Daily Minor and The Daily Mail, the so-called "quality papers", as The Times and The Guardian, make rather a sparing use of the expressive and stylistic means of the language.

Yet, the role of expressive language means and stylistic devices in the newspaper writing should not he overestimated. They stand out against the essentially neutral background. And whatever stylistic devices one comes across in newspapers, they are for the most part trite.

Broadly speaking, tradition reigns supreme in the language of the newspaper. Original forms of expression and fresh genuine stylistic means are comparatively rare in newspaper articles, editorials included.

4. Specific compositional design of newspaper articles.

Newspaper articles are divided into numerous paragraphs (practically each sentence is a separate paragraph). Several paragraphs usually make one main idea clear. Remember to combine such paragraphs in translation.

MIGRATION from the North to the South is not to

blame for the majority of new homes needed in the

South-East, a report by the Joseph Rowntree

Foundation said yesterday.

Instead it shows that movement from London,

a bigger than expected increase in the population and

incomers from abroad have brought regions nearest

the capital under pressure to extend.

The report concludes that even if there is the “urban renaissance”

in the North and Midlands that the Government hopes for,

there will be large increases in population in the South.

(The Daily Telegraph)

The specific conditions of newspaper publication, the restrictions of time and space, have left an indelible mark on newspaper English. For more than a century writers and linguists have been vigorously attacking "the slipshod construction and the vulgar vocabulary" of newspaper English. The very term newspaper English carried a shade of disparagement. Yet, for all the defects of newspaper English, serious though they may be, this form of the English literaly language cannot be reduced — as some purists have claimed — merely to careless slovenly writing or to a distorted literary English. This is one of the forms of the English literary language characterized — as any other style — by a definite communicative aim and its own definite system, of language means.